


Earthbound Coming Down

by bacchante



Series: Welcome Addiction [2]
Category: Tokyo Ghoul
Genre: Choking, Demisexuality, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Mental Instability, Romantic Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 12:56:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3811342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bacchante/pseuds/bacchante
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Part two of two: in which Amon is haunted, and Suzuya is curious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Earthbound Coming Down

**Author's Note:**

> I have no idea why this took me so long to finish. It's about sixty percent emotional exploration, thirty percent oblique references to smut, three point five percent actual smut, six percent Biblical references, and point five percent plot.

 

> _Thou art beautiful, O my love, as Tirzah, comely as Jerusalem, terrible as an army with banners._
> 
> —   Song of Solomon 6:4

 

The problem, Amon thought, was that Juuzou was just so _small_. Why couldn’t he have gotten involved with someone taller, broader, less kittenish? And he knew, he _knew_ that Juuzou was more than capable of handling himself—had proven himself a hundred times over as a fighter, a sadist, a perfect horror standing five-foot-two in a pilfered tie. That wasn’t the issue.

It was more to do with the fact that every time Juuzou turned up with fresh injuries, battered and bloodied and belying it all with a beatific grin, Amon felt a stab of panicked guilt. Not because he couldn’t protect him—that was out of the question, and logically, he didn’t believe it to be his responsibility—no, it was because for half a heartbeat after he laid eyes on him in such a state, some leftover instinct kicked in and compared Juuzou (so small, so fragile-looking) with the boys at the orphanage. The ones who left and never came back. The ones who ended as nothing more than a pile of half-eaten corpses. His father had been such a careless eater when it came down to it.

Of course, he wouldn’t call that ghoul _father_ anymore. But some things run far deeper than conscious thought, and at the core of Amon’s being, there was only one person his soul identified as a parent. _Ghoul_ , he called him now, _murderer, monster_ , but always clinging to the back of those thoughts: _spared me_.

And this was the spiral of introspection that he found himself skidding down every time Juuzou took a kagune to the face. It was more than impractical. It was something he didn’t have the heart or the words to explain, and if he occasionally caught Juuzou eyeing him sidelong as if he was trying to read his mind, well, it only made sense. There was no reason why a passing physical resemblance should plunge Amon into that ancient crisis as suddenly and sharply as if it had happened yesterday. He could hardly ask Juuzou to stop working: he was a killer, if not born then exquisitely shaped, and he would be not only lost but _dangerous_ in any other profession. Limiting him to state-sanctioned slaughter was the best anyone could hope for.

He made love like he was fighting, too. Not in anger, but in playful, reckless joy. His small, delicate fingers left dark bruises on Amon’s throat and wrists, and Amon made a show of telling him off, but his heart wasn’t in it. He hadn’t known before Juuzou had shown him what a strange, dark rush could be had just from placing oneself at another’s mercy. Amon had insisted that he wouldn’t hurt him—and that had seemed to be what Juuzou was asking him to do—but then Juuzou had tutted and knocked him down on the bed and said, "It doesn’t hurt. Trust me?" And Amon had nodded helplessly, because trust was the least of the things Amon had placed in Juuzou’s care, unlooked for. Trust was easy, even when Juuzou kissed him like he was trying to devour him and wrapped his fingers around his throat.

He wasn’t gentle, but Amon found he didn’t require gentleness of him; it was better this way, the feral grin and the merciless touch. Gentleness might have been read as hesitation. There was no doubting Juuzou’s conviction in his actions when they were powerful enough to leave marks.

Some days Amon needed that. It worked counter to the memories and the self-reproach. Sometimes he would come home from work and simply collapse on the sofa, waiting for Juuzou to come find him. He always did. He was extraordinarily focused on knowing where Amon was at all times. Amon didn’t mind. It was a little like having a guardian angel, if that angel were frequently blood-soaked and left the kitchen in a mess every time he came around.

It was a strange thing to think on: that Juuzou, for all his youth and his apparent flippancy, kept tabs on Amon for the explicit purpose of ensuring his safety. That Juuzou _worried_ about him. That Juuzou would hold him down and bite him until he drew blood if he was so inclined, but that was a form of caring, too. If Amon had uttered a word of complaint in the moment he would have stopped instantly, but Amon appreciated even the roughest treatment more than he knew how to say. Juuzou seemed to take it as read, if the smug satisfaction in his smile was anything to go by. "It’s good, right?" he asked once. At the time, he had the fingers of his right hand stuffed into Amon’s mouth, his fingernails scraping the back of Amon’s throat. Amon couldn’t draw breath or move his tongue to answer. He closed his eyes and felt tears roll down his face. He could have bitten Juuzou. Instead he expended the last bit of air left in his lungs to moan wordlessly, and Juuzou laughed and withdrew his hand. "I know exactly what you mean," he had told him, and while Amon was still coughing and gasping, he had wrapped the spit-soaked fingers he had just pulled from his mouth around his cock and jerked him off with ruthless efficiency. Juuzou had a fascination with semen—Amon didn’t flatter himself that it was his in particular—probably because he never produced any himself. Oh, he _came_ , but it was always dry when he did. Amon privately thought of it as _clean_ , but he didn’t think Juuzou would have liked that idea, so he kept it to himself.

It wasn’t as if they talked much about it, at any rate. Juuzou seemed to understand things like sex and pain implicitly, without the need of language; Amon was somewhat less a creature of instinct. The first few times, they had both been a little lost, clumsily overcautious. Juuzou had a lot of bravado, but at the end of the day he was as inexperienced as Amon was, and he wasn’t even really sure that he would _like_ doing this with him. Sex had always seemed like such an unnecessary extra as far as Juuzou was concerned. He knew the mechanics of it, but he didn’t understand what was supposed to be so appealing about it—orgasms sounded alright, but why do it in someone else’s company when you could just as easily do it alone? If closeness and contact made it better, why be particular about partners in the way people seemed to be? Why not choose based on harmlessness? Juuzou thought if he was going to intentionally make himself that vulnerable with another person, he’d want them to be someone he knew he could take down.

And yet.

He knew plenty of people who would be easy to dispose of. Some of them were even Ghoul Investigators (although he didn’t expect them to last long in that line of work). He knew ghouls and other, stranger types who defied categorization, all of whom he could easily, safely, even _legally_ destroy if he wanted to, and yet, not a single one of these piqued his interest. He thought it over and thought again, and then he looked down at himself and decided, _ah, she took that from me, too_. Well and good. He had only been curious; it was no great tragedy. He continued as he always had, and forgot his curiosity.

He remembered it quite suddenly, in a burst of unfamiliar heat, some months later when Amon rounded on him and lifted him clean off his feet by the collar of his shirt. They were both still running on the high of a hard fight, and Amon—polite, neat, by-the-book _Amon_ —he was incandescent, electrifying, bright with an aggression he rarely showed. Juuzou feigned rebellious boredom, but he wasn’t even sure whether it was an attempt to defuse the situation or to rile Amon further. He didn’t want to fight him, exactly, but that was the closest he could get to describing this feeling to himself—as if he wanted to scrap with him, right here, no weapons, just bare hands and teeth and _skin_ —

Well, he thought giddily. Well, well.

He called Amon a pervert, just for the hell of it, just for inspiring such strange and exciting ideas. Amon eyed him with something close to disgust (or was it resignation?). He backed down, and Juuzou strangled his disappointment. He would not be deterred before he had even begun to try.

In the end, it had proved a much more complicated mission than Juuzou had first imagined. The direct approach had not worked. If anything it caused Amon to avoid him, which was unexpected, although in hindsight he supposed it shouldn’t have been. Here was Amon backing down again, as if to keep himself from hurting Juuzou. It was maddeningly frustrating. It couldn’t have been more obvious that Juuzou was in no danger at all as far as Amon was concerned; _he_ was the one giving chase. It might have made sense if Amon had simply not been attracted to him, but no, that wasn’t the case—Juuzou might have been a little baffled by human behaviour sometimes, but even he caught the way Amon looked at him. It was a lovely expression, actually, full of frustration and guilt and something close to hunger that Juuzou learned to call desire. As much as he enjoyed being the focus of such a look, he still wished he could have stripped away the first two aspects and left the third unobscured. The mere idea made him shudder. He gave the pursuit of it more careful deliberation, and decided on a tactical retreat.

In its own strange way, it had worked, although not exactly as he had planned. Amon began to slip, little by little, and Juuzou grew bold. By the time he had Amon stripped naked in the quiet haven of his tiny apartment bathroom, Juuzou was past asking permission; he was simply taking what Amon offered. He stopped short of taking more than that. He thought Amon might cut him off for good if he caused real distress.

And so it took some time, barricaded in that apartment with a man who was still blinking old blood out of his vision. Juuzou wouldn’t let him wear his gloves to touch him. He took the black silk scarf out of his hands and wrapped it twice around his wrists, and Amon lay quiet and tender as Juuzou kissed him, and kissed him, and kissed him. He didn’t know how much time passed before Amon tossed the scarf aside and laid his hands on him, only that it was good when he did, that he was no longer making any effort to avoid the hallucinations. For all Juuzou knew, when Amon looked at him he saw a nightmare bathed in blood, but it didn’t seem that way. He looked at him as if he were something miraculous. As if he would kill to keep him breathing. He would, in fact; he already had. Juuzou supposed that was what they called _romantic_ , or at least it was if you were the kind of person who used words like that. He wasn’t. He called it _right_ , and _welcome_ , and _reciprocated_.

At some point this had ceased to be an experiment or an attempt at satisfying wayward curiosity. If he was being honest with himself, this whole situation had developed into something more than he had originally meant it to be. At least now he knew why people didn’t choose their sexual partners based on harmlessness. Amon was the opposite of harmless, in more ways than one; he would be difficult to overpower, and more than that, he robbed Juuzou of the will to do so. People called Juuzou insane all the time, but this, _this_ was insane. This was far less predictable and much more dangerous than anything Juuzou had ever done before.

People were so stupid to call _this_ a weakness. He had never felt more powerful in his life.

He had been naïve, he realized, to think that he would be able to cajole Amon into fucking him once, just for the experience, and then return to work as normal. For a start, Amon wouldn’t be cajoled. When Juuzou tried to charm him, he only grew more stubborn. It took Juuzou far too long to realize that it wasn’t dislike that was holding Amon back, but the exact opposite; that Amon cared for him, and that his cold silences weren’t so much cold as _awkward_ , and that he pretended to be steadfast and unbreakable only because that was what he required of himself, not because he _was_.

Juuzou knew all about broken things. He was an expert on the subject. He did not intend to let Amon join their ranks, even if he had managed to bring himself to the brink with quiet efficiency.

He sat up, pressed his thighs into Amon’s hips for balance. Amon watched silently as he stretched for a long moment. “Well?” Juuzou asked finally. “Am I bloody?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re seeing blood, right? Do you see any on me?”

“There’s no blood on you,” Amon replied, which was not the answer to the question Juuzou had asked.

“Do you _see_ any on me?” he repeated.

“No.”

Juuzou blinked. Considered. “Do you see it anywhere else?”

“I’m not looking anywhere else right now,” Amon said softly. He lifted one hand as if to lay it against Juuzou’s stomach—it would have almost spanned the breadth of it—but he stopped short of touching him. “ _Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee_ ,” he murmured. Juuzou wasn’t sure he even realized he had spoken aloud.

“What’s that?” he asked anyway.

Amon blinked, dropped his hand, refocused his attention on Juuzou’s face. “Nothing.”

“What’s it from?”

“It’s from the Bible.”

“Oh,” Juuzou said, mystified and a little impressed. “What does it mean?”

“Where I grew up, it was the closest thing we had to pornography.”

Juuzou blinked. “The _Bible_?”

“Yes,” Amon said, and laughter sparked in his eyes. “I’ll show you sometime, if you like.”

“Alright,” Juuzou said comfortably. “What about the cross?”

“What?”

Juuzou pointed to the necklace and the cross-shaped pendant hanging from it, piled untidily onto the nightstand. “You’re always wearing it. Shinohara says it’s because you’re a Christian.”

Amon’s lips twitched. “Hm. Not a very good one.”

Juuzou shrugged. “I think you’re good,” he said, as if his word should carry weight equal to God’s. “What about me? Would I make a good Christian?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Ah.”

“Juuzou.” Amon’s eyes were dark as slate and almost as unreadable. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, but—thank you.”

Juuzou frowned. “Don’t thank me. I’m being selfish.”

Amon didn’t ask for elaboration on this assertion; his expression didn’t even change. “I’m grateful,” was all he said.

⁂

The days passed in an ill-defined series of takeout meals and hours of meaningless TV shows. Amon watched Juuzou leave each morning and barely reacted when he returned in the evenings bearing cardboard boxes and disposable chopsticks. He didn’t ask about any of his investigations, didn’t even inquire after Miss Mado. He left his cross on the nightstand and abandoned his gloves to some infrequently-opened drawer. He still picked distractedly at his own fingers from time to time, as if trying to remove layers of stained skin; but more often he was content to eat what he was given and watch whatever was airing. In the absence of the gloves—or perhaps with the unforgiving clarity of broad daylight—he grew shy of touching Juuzou, and re-established his personal space with silent determination. He insisted on spending his nights on the sofa, and banished Juuzou to the bedroom.

Despite this, he talked more freely than Juuzou had ever known him to. It became clear that he missed the late Mr Mado sorely, and harboured a strange tender sense of responsibility for the surviving Miss Mado. He wondered aloud about the one-eyed ghouls that had been cropping up with alarming frequency in recent months, and Juuzou offered what insight he could, but in truth he was as baffled as Amon seemed to be. His instincts told him to be careful in pursuing the answer to that particular mystery, and his instincts were rarely altogether wrong. He bit his tongue on the warning that tried to bubble up his throat during that particular discussion, and took out the resultant frustration on a helpless onion—which launched its own brand of counterattack, and made his eyes sting and stream.

“Why are you trying to cook?” Amon wanted to know. He was watching with slightly concerned amusement as Juuzou swiped at his eyes with his sleeve, the carving knife dangling from his fingers, momentarily forgotten.

“Because you can’t survive on takeout,” Juuzou told him matter-of-factly. He spoke as if he had come to this conclusion on his own, but he was quoting Shinohara verbatim.

“What about candy?” he heard Amon mutter, but chose to ignore it.

“Burgers,” Juuzou declared. “We’re having burgers.”

“Are we?” Amon said dubiously. “Have you ever done this before?” he added, watching Juuzou absently toss the knife and snatch it from the air as a means of adjusting the angle of the cut.

“Not to an onion,” Juuzou said ominously.

The burgers proved quite edible.

⁂

More than a week passed before Amon deigned to touch Juuzou again. He would have found it disheartening that it took so long, except that when it happened, there was no trace of hesitation, no calculation, no fear. One night when Juuzou stood to make his way to bed—alone, as decreed by Amon himself—Amon’s hand shot up to grab his wrist. It wasn’t rough, nor would it have been easy to shake off. Juuzou didn’t try. He sat back down on the sofa next to him.

“Is it alright if I come with you?” Amon asked softly.

Juuzou cocked his head. “It’s your apartment. You don’t need permission.”

“Yes, I do,” Amon insisted. His grip was changing, weakening. His index finger slid into the curve of Juuzou’s palm and stayed there.

Juuzou glanced down at their tangled hands and raised his eyebrows at Amon. “Why the sudden change?”

It gave Amon pause. He thought it over before he answered. “I thought if I touched you I’d hate myself,” he said finally. “And that might still be true. But. I’m beginning to think if I _don’t_ touch you I’ll hate myself for that, too.” He bowed his head, suddenly shy.

Juuzou bowed his head, too, ducking low to drop a kiss against the back of Amon’s hand where it still gripped his wrist. “You can come with me if you want.”


End file.
